Religion Is A Scourge Upon The Human Race

Well I just so happen to be in a particularly foul mood when I stumbled upon this web site so you guys will have to bear with me while I step up on my soapbox for a moment here. For my first blog I guess I'll go ahead and show you how accurate that little "what kind of atheist are you" test result on my page is. It will be short, sweet, and overflowing with anger. I've spent the last couple weeks reading about the insanity in Gaza as a bunch of irrational fanatics kill not just each other but countless women and children over a strip of land which they both feel their particular invisible sky man has granted to them and them only. As I read this I can't help but wonder if humanity will manage to shake this prevalent, widespread psychological disease before it kills us all.

I've always tried to be a compassionate, accepting atheist. I've tried to find within myself the tolerance and understanding that most religious people I've met lack. Heck, one of the reasons I loathe religion is the intolerance and prejudice that is not only rampant and generally accepted in the religious community but usually supported and spurred on by religious leaders. It seems wrong to show the same type of hatred and intolerance towards the group of people whom I despise for it. But then a couple groups of these psychopaths start lobbing rockets at each other in the name of God again and I go back to wondering why they deserve any more tolerance and compassion than I would grant a pack of gangsters that slaughter a group of school children caught in the crossfire of their turf war? What's the difference? Because these groups have "God" on their side they deserve special treatment?

Organized religion has a long history as perhaps the pioneers and certainly the masters of hatred, intolerance, bigotry, murder, and torture. Organized crime has NOTHING on organized religion when it comes to a cold, uncaring, ruthless pursuit of money and power. Go back through the history of mankind, of all the worst atrocities, the wars, the genocides... organized religion of some form usually has their hand in the cookie pot somewhere. It may not be the root of ALL evil but it can certainly be blamed for the majority of it.

Ask yourself for a moment if anything else would still be tolerated if it had caused so much misery and pain. If there were, say, an herb or drug that directly resulted in bigotry, death, and destruction on the scale religion has caused would it be legal? If there were a successful business that regularly trampled on people’s human rights, spread and attempted to justify outright hatred and disdain for entire groups of people, and had a centuries-old history of murder and torture, would they still be allowed to operate?

So why do we tolerate religion? And where do these assholes get off claiming ATHEISTS are the ones lacking moral structure? Let’s forget for a moment the debate over the ridiculousness of their belief system and focus on the evil it creates, why don’t atheists make more of an issue about this? Especially considering how quick the sky person brigade is to throw their superior moral standing in our faces. If *I’M* the amoral one here then what do you have to say for the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, blaming the evils of Jews for the European plague and burning them alive, the murder and torture of supposed “witches” and “heretics” in the early days of America, bombing of abortion clinics in the name of god, the murder of homosexuals due to religious dogma. The Holocaust may not have been a direct result of Christianity but no doubt years of anti-semitism spurred by Christian teachings had quite a bit to do with it. Had they set off on their quest a couple hundred years earlier the Nazi’s likely would’ve been praised by the church for their holy quest. And that’s just Christianity. I haven’t even gone into the atrocities committed by Jews and Muslims; they’ve got plenty of blood on their hands too.
So I ask again, with such a long track record of hatred, intolerance, hypocrisy, and bloodshed why do we as atheists show respect and tolerance for these outdated, barbaric philosophies? It’s a serious question. I’m at my wits end and seriously looking for someone to convince me that there’s SOME reason left for me to show tolerance to these miserable, hypocritical Neanderthals and their antiquated belief system so please do chime in with your thoughts. Why do they deserve my respect?

"It’s a serious question. I’m at my wits end and seriously looking for someone to convince me that there’s SOME reason left for me to show tolerance to these miserable, hypocritical Neanderthals and their antiquated belief system so please do chime in with your thoughts. Why do they deserve my respect?"

For the mass majority, I'd say not so much respect, as indifference. And really mainly 'cause they still out-number us.

There are scenarios that I can respect the individuals. But as soon as they become a group, and especially when they are religion, its just minimal tolerance since there are more of them than there are of me.